Which is why I was recommending VEPro It makes your life a lot easier in Logic Pro...especially with light track counts. You should really consider Logic 10.3 as well, it is light years ahead of Logic 9.

Yeah thx for the info. I like mainly the general point he made about why templates are useful and the mindset of using them, I agree with that part. W/VEP I see the point of that too - if one wants an easier way than the method above I am using - disabling & enabling mic samples as needed- which can be a little clicking around. Concerning Logic Pro 9 vs. X I have never felt bad about Logic 9 per se, but I may have missed something about X that makes it way better than 9. I'd be interested in the reasons you think it's "light years" beyond. You're probably right, just never had a big issue with using Logic Pro 9 still. If I did want to update my DAW I would be tempted to get Cubase actually because it's really easy to make a huge and useful disabled template seeing as it is unlimited audio/midi tracks which can enable/disable with a click. Is there any other reason as well you would go Logic X over Cubase Pro 9?

Another note: it would be sweet to get a PCIe flash ssd running at 7-8/gb per second into a thunderbolt port for external streaming on iMac because internal drive ssd Sata connection can support up to 6gb/sec at max anyway, so in theory the external thunderbolt is faster w/ an external PCIe. Although there are 3 extra internal drive bays in the mid 2011 iMac so it's really expandable on the ssd storage/streaming side (not to mention the possibility of adding two more external drives hooked up via thunderbolt), too bad can't add more than 32gb ram into mid 2011 iMacs. But I guess you can always go the slave route. Because I know you and many others here are such big fans of that. Adding drives and slaves and buying the software is expensive, I would almost rather do a very smart one computer disabled template in cubase pro 9, even though I do not own that DAW at the moment, I understand if I did I could make a huge template of like 1000 or more instruments disabled without the need of a slave and just be able to click once to enable samples on tracks I will be using-seems to be a lot cheaper than getting a slave and it's still a good workflow, saves the money needed for a slave and Vienna Ensemble Pro software (but you still have to buy cubase if you do not own it), or at least it is cheaper. You would just need good drives for steaming the samples and decent amount of RAM. That totally makes sense. Its like the difference between a '9' setup and a '10' setup to me. All power to the people with perfect setups, but it's kind of like the difference between mustang and a viper, both get you where you need to go quickly , but ones a little faster and smoother ride. My Logic idea works actually really well for conserving CPU and RAM but the car is maybe not as pretty as a mustang or viper, but it can tow some weight, just takes a little longer ride. Not too much longer though IMO. A composing session may take 20-45 mins longer. But I do like the cubase idea and just having all tracks ready to go. The Logic option is good on a budget I think, where as the others are very convenient and worth the eventual investment if possible.